Carthage from the air
smoking ruins
walls robbed out
trowel scrapes on tesserae
vertiginous descent
through desert sands

Prussian moderne
broad steps leading down
empty as ransacked tombs
– Carthage, then Steglitz

won't look like Chicago
now: jokes with an edge
& the smell of spilled beer
the map redrawn by debris
cataloguing the missing
the early days, before the guilt

a city full of rumours
we protest, they protest
a measured pavane
invite to canapés, fingerfood

a small man with ghastly
teeth, cigar & sketchpad
peeks through doors
on inelegance, decadence, laughter of whores

tanks roll in newsreel
the end of history

he watches the dancers
step: the band & the beer
fill the hall & the head
drown a drone that could be overhead
percussive firefight in what passed
for a street, reduced to flat
cabaret scenery

an underground rocket factory
vast fingers poked into the earth
telling stories out of school
nacht und nebel

fingers in that pie
who'll have
the biggest slice
which segment is coloured
red on the chart – & who
gets red in the division
of the legend?

poets & old pros
stagger under this mulch
from the multinational propa-
gator: which side
of the story
do we give credit?

black
market, grubby
tunnellings below
all this weight
of what was domestic
architecture, severed
fingers

 

Copyright © Aidan Semmens, 2003